What's up with the random adds of users who write in Russian? I just reported about six of them as bots, although that was sometimes difficult as the menu didn't pop up every time. What I don't get is how this stuff is useful . . . If I could read the "posts," would they be asking me to forward my bank account information? Are they hoping I'll friend them--cause I know lots of people from the former USSR, ayup--and then they can troll my entries, looking for products they can sell me? ("Boris! Prepare more perfume oils at once!")

I just don't get it. Is there profit to be made in creating fake journals and randomly friending everybody you can get your hands on?

(And just in case you ARE a Russian sockpuppet . . . Укусите меня, Вы несчастные шлюхи.)

I am badly overextended right now. I can't keep up with all my commitments. Seriously, I haven't even been able to answer e-mail. And I'm trying to carve out niches of time for myself--time to study for my class, time to write, time where I don't have to BE somewhere--and it feels like I'm just failing at it. Today, I left my phone at home before class . . . When I came back I had EIGHT messages (I didn't check them until just now because I just didn't realize--it was on silent, of course, because every waking moment seems like it's spent in class).

It was like the whole world crashed because I wasn't available for five hours, one of which was on the road and two and a half of which were in class. Strangely, it didn't feel that long.

Andrew Marvell haunts me periodically. Not as frequently as Joey Ramone, old Simon and Garfunkle songs, or, oddly, Alexander Pope, but often enough. Little bits of "Coy Mistress" have a way of turning up like gum on my shoe. Lately, I keep hearing the line about "time's winged chariot hurrying near." Over and over. And each time I think hmm, that's a little tame. Instead the horses are doped up, the axle is broken, and we're all careening down a path fit for a mountain goat.

I can make SOME of this work. But not all of it. I need help. Not guilt over missed commitments, just understanding and patience. And maybe this weekend I'll get to my mail.

Larry Gibson is the real deal. I've met this gentleman, who is trying to hang on to his family lands in the face of environmentally-devastating and shitstain-ugly mountaintop removal. West Virginia is gorgeous country, but there are huge sections being transformed into a flat, dangerous mess . . . Seriously, what I've seen and studied is so damn ugly it makes me sick to think about it.

Currently he's been nominated by CNN for an award; however, he is currently being beaten out by a guy who recycles computers. (?!?)

If you'd like to vote, the original e-mail alert I received is pasted below. Contact info from the sender has been stripped out to protect her from bots and/or Bruce Stirling.

____________________________________________________________________

Larry Gibson, of Kayford Mountain, West Virginia, a mountain defender and Appalachian-Hero extraordinaire, has been nominated as a CNN Defender of the Planet Hero!

If you are new to the list and not familiar with Larry's work, check out http://www.mountainkeeper.org/ for more information about him! He's amazing!

You may know that he was featured last month as a CNN Hero, but please support Larry's nomination for CNN Defender of the Planet Hero by voting for him online at:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/cnn.heroes/


Current STATS on CNN's Nominees:

James Burgett
repairs discarded computers and gives them away
49%

Larry Gibson
is fighting to protect his land from mountaintop mining
15%

Ken Noguchi
leads "litter brigades" on the slopes of Mount Fuji in Japan
5%

Eugene Rutagarama
is dedicated to saving mountain gorillas from extinction
32%

___________________________________
Cassie M. R---
Coordinator, Liston B. Ramsey Center for Regional Studies
http://www.mhc.edu/regional

From the Reuters story on "Talk Like a Pirate Day":

A Brazilian fan even sent a letter of support in a bottle while one overjoyed Argentinian whose birthday falls on the same day said "It will be difficult to talk in Spanish like pirates but we will try."

I guess that's because they keep rolling their ARRRRRRHs.

Now the freakshow is coming to town.

<http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/vtfunerals/index.html>

I realize the height of futility is the Internet petition (otherwise HBO would have brought Carnivale back). But at least it beats my Plan A, which involved running over Fred Phelps with a Chrysler.

I love my car.

Everything was really quiet around here, considering the influx of people for the convocation. The outskirts were like a ghost town, except for the lines of students in school colors. I was in the 460 business district, right next door to Blacksburg; everything had kind of a strange and surreal quality. Outside a clothing store, clerks were hanging big bunches of ribbons, the kind you'd see on homecoming weekend, but there were big yellow strips dangling out that read "In Memorium." Inside, wandering through the racks of clothes, I could hear the Talking Heads: "Once in a Lifetime." Of course.

Afterwards my mother and I try to escape by ducking into a Mexican restaurant. It's full of TVs, one in every corner, on every wall. Every one of them tuned to the convocation. Governor Kaine's voice rose in power as he talked about Job, about the empty feeling of despair: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And then he emphasized the community, Virginia as a "commonwealth" and not a state.

His words rang with power.

Eventually the media circus will go home. Eventually people will get to grieve and remember outside of the camera's eye. The flags will rise again, the ribbons blow away in that knifelike, gritty wind. The grief will still be here, but so will the sense of connection.

I'm a teacher. Education is my business. And the fear will NOT shut me up, the shadow of this massacre will NOT send me running home. And all the whacked-out, narcissistic, masturbatory killers in the world do not have the power to do that one miraculous thing--to awaken a sense of wonder, in this magnificent and terrible world.

Oh my god he killed 22 people.

Some people would say it's none of my business. But it still hurts to see something die.

It always will.